The XENON dark matter search: status of XENON10

Abstract

Abstract. The XENON experiment searches for dark matter particles called WIMPs using liquid xenon (LXe) as the active target. The detector is a 3D position sensitive Time Projection Chamber optimized to simultaneously measure the ionization and scintillation produced by a recoil event of energy as low as 16 keV. The distinct ratio of the two signals for nuclear recoils arising from WIMPs and neutrons and for electron recoils from the dominant gamma-ray background determines its event-by-event discrimination. With 1 ton of LXe distributed in ten identical modules, the proposed XENON1T experiment will achieve a sensitivity more than a factor of thousand beyond current limits. A phased program will test a 10 kg detector (XENON10) followed by a 100 kg (XENON100) one as unit module for the XENON1T scale experiment. We review the progress of the XENON R&D phase before presenting the status of XENON10. The experiment will be based at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory and is expected to start data taking in early 2006.

Thick GEM versus thin GEM in two-phase argon avalanche detectors

“…The possibility to detect weak signals in two-phase avalanche detectors, in the range of 1-100 initial electrons, is the key factor in coherent neutrino scattering and dark-matter search experiments [4,5,6,7]. In order to study the THGEM performance with weak signals, we developed a technique of obtaining signals with small amplitudes, in the range of 2-50 primary electrons; it is similar to that presented in [18], where it permitted reaching single-electron counting in triple-GEM multipliers.…”

“…16); it corresponds to one event per 16 sec or 0.007 Hz per 1 cm 2 of the detector's active area. This is a rather low noise rate, in particular compared to those of photomultiplier tubes being used in two-phase detectors for dark matter search experiments [5,7].…”

“…Largevolume detectors of this kind have many potential applications in rare-event experiments: coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering [4], dark matter search [5,6,7], solar [8] and long baseline [9] neutrino detection.…”

Thermal right-handed sneutrino dark matter in theFD-term model of hybrid inflation

“…Its cross-section may well be estimated by [28] σ nucleus el 36) where m red is the reduced mass of the LRHS-nucleus system, i.e. 37) and M X is the nuclear matrix element. For comparison purposes, we express our results in terms of the nucleon cross section.…”

“…The nucleon matrix element M nucleon ∼ 10 −3 is mostly sensitive to the strange-quark Yukawa coupling. An adequate estimate of the elastic scattering cross section σ nucleon el of a right-handed sneutrino with a nucleon yields [28] The upper limits on λρ are derived by comparing the estimate (3.38) with the current bound on the spin-independent nucleon cross section from the CDMS-II experiment and the expected sensitivities of the SuperCDMS extension [36] and the Xenon1T experiment [37]. These limits are included in figures 3 and 4.…”